ISSUE-111: XSLT conformance levels

Manu: I've been talking with Ivan and Micah
Dubinko about this
... XSLT implementations will have two problems: whitespace preservation and
inclusion of namespaces in XML literals
... Micah thinks this will be a black mark against RDFa if it requires
whitespace preservation
... and Ivan doesn't like the way we're doing namespaces in XML literals

<ShaneM> I would just say it is a
"SHOULD"

Manu: Micah suggests that the spec make
whitespace preservation optional
... either for XSLT alone or for all implementations

Ben: I'm opposed to doing something special for
XSLT1
... if we make whitespace preservation optional, we should do it for all
implementations

Ralph: +1 to not treating XSLT differently

Ben: if we do make these optional, how will
that affect interoperability?
... will people not be able to rely on XML literals?

Shane: we decided that whitespace should be
preserved
... and we said the underlying spec determines how namespaces are preserved
in XML literals
... if we make namespace preservation optional, that reduces the utility of
that part of the spec in my opinion

Manu: the namespace problem is that XSLT1
doesn't appear to be able to add xmlns attributes to the top-level element
... Ivan did say he thought there was a way to get @xmlns into every element
but these would overwrite any other @xmlns in those elements, so that would
be wrong

Ben: not carrying the namespaces inside XML
literal would simply be wrong

Manu: there are some large practical
implementations

Ralph: we are not required to show that all
implementations fully implement the spec
... we are only required to show that all features have been implemented
somewhere

Shane: Ben made an important point that we
should not make an exception for broken tools
... if there are tools that can't support the spec, then those are not
suitable implementation tools

Ben: but these shortcomings can point to design
issues in the spec
... I don't feel that the XML Literal design is wrong
... however, the whitespace preservation could be changed

Steven: XML does not specify whether whitespace
is preserved or not
... XML says there are two sorts of whitespace preservation; default and
preserved
... you don't know whether 'default' preserves whitespace
... there's no way XSLT can know how the source language specifys whitespace
preservation
... and the default may be 'preserve'
... so XSLT has no business touching whitespace at all

Ben: so I propose we make no change

<msporny> +1

Ralph: +1 to no change

<ShaneM> +1 for no change

Mark: agree
... could we slightly change the wording to say 'if you support XML Literals,
then this is how you should support them'
... i.e. we could allow implementations to not support XML Literal

Ralph: I'd rather we consider these as
implementation bugs and let the community experience determine how important
it is for any given implementation to fix its bug
... we decided in favor of whitespace preservation on the basis that those
(few?) applications who really cared had no other way to get whitespace
... the deployment experience can show whether those applications really
influence implementations

<benadida> PROPOSAL: in response to
ISSUE-111, we do not believe a change in the spec is necessary. We believe
that, architecturally, whitespace and namespace preservation are important.
We rely on deployment experience to inform the specifics of complete
implementations.

<benadida> PROPOSAL: in response to
ISSUE-111, we do not believe a change in the spec is justified. We believe
that, architecturally, whitespace and namespace preservation are important.
We rely on deployment experience to ....

PROPOSAL: in response to ISSUE-111, we do not
believe a change in the spec is justifiable. We believe that,
architecturally, whitespace and namespace preservation are important. We will
rely on deployment experience to inform specific implementation
techniques.

<benadida> +1

<msporny> +1

<Steven> +1

<ShaneM> +1

RESOLUTION: in response to
ISSUE-111, we do not believe a change in the spec is justifiable. We believe
that, architecturally, whitespace and namespace preservation are important.
We will rely on deployment experience to inform specific implementation
techniques.

<Steven> "and thus only yield their true
triples only once they are placed"

Mark: is this actually responding to the
question?
... in the spirit of allowing experimentation, I'd prefer not to be so
strict
... just say that to determine the triples you need the full document
context

<Steven> What about multi namespace
documents?

<Zakim> Steven, you wanted to discuss
follow your nose and to talk about fragments

Steven: my worry is the wording that triples
are only revealed in the full document context
... I'd like SVG fragments to contain triples

Ben: I believe there will be applications that
do extract triples from DataRSS
... but I think we need to defer the standardization of that for a future
version

Mark: the current language is more rigid than
we need

Steven: I'd say "only once they are placed in
complete documents"

Mark: if we're trying to address "be careful
when you put fragments in" then just say that

PROPOSE: s/fragments only have all of their
context and thus only yield their true triples only once they are placed
within"/triples in fragments must be interpreted in the context of a"

Steven: I'm just asking that RDF triples be
extractable from SVG+

Shane: but this spec is not covering SVG

<Steven> But it is covering the xhtml
namespace

<ShaneM> I think that means it would read
like this: <p>While these uses are legitimate, and their results may be
predictable if the fragments are carefully constructed, remember that
XHTML+RDFa is not specified for XHTML fragments; triples in fragments must be
interpreted in the context

<ShaneM> of a complete XHTML+RDFa
document.

<ShaneM> Consequently, authors should craft
these fragments carefully and

<ShaneM> consider the various ways in which
a given fragment can be framed.</p>

Steven: but some folks claim there is no XHTML
on the Web today because they strictly apply the specifications and don't
find documents that use the correct media type
... it may depend on what Micah means by 'fragments'

<markbirbeck> "A common situation will be
to take fragments of XHTML+RDFa and move them from one document to another.
This may be through the use of tools, such as cut-and-paste, or through
snippets of code that are provided by organisations such as Creative Commons.
However, authors should be aware that this specification does not say how
these fragments should be processed outside of a document (although future
versions will address this). They can of course be in

Steven: if he's thinking of multiple namespace
documents then it is bad to exclude RDFa from them

Ralph: Micah's message specifically referred to
copy-and-paste

Ben: WAI PF WG also mentioned fragments

Steven: but if Micah is only referring to bits
of XHTML lying around, then we're fine

<benadida> PROPOSE: resolve ISSUE-113 as
"we will not be specifying processing rules for fragments, though a future
version of the spec may do so. We don't rule out the use case."

Ralph: +1 to proposal

<msporny> +1

<markbirbeck> +1

Shane: ok

RESOLUTION: close ISSUE-113 as
"we will not be specifying processing rules for fragments, though a future
version of the spec may do so. We don't rule out the use case."

TAG comments

Steven: we're discussing the wording of the
response
... issue about the media type
... our reply is along the lines of 'HTML and XHTML have always contained
assertions and this is just another way to express those assertions'
... I think this is completely independent of media type because of
mixed-namespace documents
... you can't tell from the media type whether a document actually uses the
XHTML namespace
... our XHTML namespace tells you how to interpret the XHTML attributes [in a
mixed-namespace document]

Shane: the got-ya here is that some TAG
participants view media type as an announcement mechanism
... and we're saying "no, media type is not an announcement mechanism"